Tower Inspection, Maintenance and Defect Reporting
Inspection is a regime, not an event. Candidates should distinguish pre-use checks (by the user, before each shift), periodic inspections (by a competent person at defined intervals), and post-incident or post-high-wind inspections. Each has a different scope and record. The pre-use check covers obvious defects - missing pins, cracked welds, damaged guardrails, worn tyres, hydraulic leaks, correct labelling. The periodic inspection is more thorough and must be recorded.
Traps centre on who may inspect and what counts as a defect. A user can carry out a pre-use check but cannot certify a tower as safe after modification or repair; that requires a competent person. Questions often describe a minor-looking issue - a slightly bent brace, a missing split pin - and expect you to treat it as a defect requiring the tower to be taken out of service until assessed, not "monitored".
Record-keeping is part of the control: inspection records, defect reports, and the register of repairs should be traceable to the specific tower by identification number. Defects must be reported promptly to the responsible person and, where safety-critical, the tower isolated and tagged.
Rule of thumb: if in doubt, isolate and report - a tower out of service costs time, a collapse costs lives. Worked example: a split pin missing from a base connection is not cosmetic; it is a load-path defect, so tag the tower, remove it from service, and record the finding.